Yesterday Carolee, our Town's ACO, and I travelled to Hamden to attend Precious Cargo, a conference about animal transport. Held by the highly regarded, AWFCT, I expected to learn a lot since I've only worked on one transport so far.
The Quinnipiac School of Law, Grand Court Room, lived up to its' name. With cathedral ceilings, custom shaped windows and lots of stunning details in a variety of carved wood, it certainly felt like a place where something important was about to happen. The room was filled with participants. What surprised me was that there were a fair number of men in attendance. I expected lots of ladies wearing shirts festooned with cat or dog artwork or rescue group promotional t-shirts. I teased Carolee that she should have worn her uniform, which is basically a police offers' uniform and a special patch added. She was dressed in a cute outfit and wore pretty sandals, a far cry from the lumbering poly-blend she's usually trapped in.
Everyone was nicely attired and professional looking. I was even more impressed and felt maybe I should have spiffed up even more than I did.
If I was a proper reporter, instead of a blogger/author, I'd tell you about each and every panelist and go on and on in great detail, until you passed out or just skipped to the end where I talk about what I learned.
The thing is, although most of the panelists had a great deal of experience and background in their particular fields; law, Massachusetts transport laws, as well as a woman from a dog rescue who uses transports and the owner of a transport company, they didn't talk much about cats. In fact a few folks had to bring up the question of "what about CATS?" One of the panelists referred to them as the "C" word, which I found highly offensive. Another basically said that there's no real reason to import cats since you can get what you want here and transporting "short haired plain jane" cats was a waste of resources. Tell that to Huggy, Dash, Snuggles, Angel, Pumpkin, Spyder and so many more!
Here's my "plain jane" boring cat that didn't deserve to be saved because she was from out of state.
We were even asked to PROMISE not to fight with each other or be rude because apparently this is a very volatile subject. There are folks that think it's wrong to go out of state because those special breed/cute dogs (forget cats because they don't count) prevent families from adopting pit bulls. Yes, this came up and and great length-which has nothing to do with transporting or laws. A lot of people were stating that their shelter might only have pitties in their building but if that was all they had, through education, they could place these dogs in homes, but if there was competition from labs or what have you, then the pits were put down. This is a topic for another conference, not what we are talking about. It was supposed to be about laws, health and safety issues.
There was a lot of discussion about law. The problem is it was discussions about the laws in MA and their possible effect in CT and laws that could have been passed in CT, but didn't make it through the last session. What is to be learned from laws that didn't happen? What is to be learned about the big law change in MA? That it will force some bad folks to try to sell dogs in CT for $25 w/out proper health certs. This could have been an email to all of us as something to watch out for, not part of a conference.
I'm really sorry to say this, but because there was so much talk about laws that aren't going to happen or have happened in other states, my eyes began to roll into the back of my head.
Kyle Peterson, who runs P.E.T.S. was very professional and helpful. I met one of his competitors who also spoke very highly of his reputation. I spoke with Kyle about doing cat transports and he was very courteous and interested. Heck, it's more business for him and he has a separate section of his trailers just for cats! Finally, at least I found someone who is willing to work with us and give us a good rate.
I also talked to a few other people and honestly, that was the best part of the conference for me; meeting the attendees. They were bright, smart, compassionate, funny folks who all wanted to make things right. They stated some facts that the dog imports weren't causing a problem with adoptions and, in fact, were helping. One shelter stated that because they had a more interesting selection of animals, word got out and folks not only adopted those imported dogs, but senior dogs, special needs dogs and pitties. When they stopped doing transports, their adoption numbers declined.
Carolee's statement gets displayed on the board. They cut out the part that made the ACO on the panel look bad because she said that you can't transfer dogs from one town to another, but that's false. You CAN transport them if you do the proper paperwork, but no one wants to bother.
But what OF cats? Yes, there are TONS of cats in CT. I should help every single one of them and not help cats out of state. The problem is that we can only safely handle cats up to about 5 months of age and that's it. After that they can become a serious burden to our home foster network. If that's the case and that's what people want-if they are set on finding a kitten, as so many adopters are, and it's winter here and we don't HAVE kittens, but in the south they still have an overpopulation problem, then why don't I save a few of them?
Sure, I've gotten some folks, a very few, to adopt adults, but I've also seen people with children, most often, adamant that they have a young cat or kitten. Some have told me they've looked and looked all over the state for their ideal kitten and if no shelter has it, they will wait. It does make me feel a bit sleezy. I haven't sorted my thoughts out on this completely, but geez...if I have room in my house and it's winter and I don't have local fosters who need my help, then I'm going to look elsewhere. I can help another 30 or so kittens find a home until we get busy again. I've also got two potential foster homes who will also work with me this winter. We just need to make sure we don't break the bank and the cats are healthy before they get here
That was my biggest disappointment yesterday-there wasn't much said about how to maintain health of animals in transport. I was hoping this was more about "how to" than the law. Huggy came to me with bad ear mites and flea dirt. There is no reason that should have happened. Tonight I saw a tiny bald spot on her head. She's been here for three weeks. Does she have ringworm??? If so, I am screwed because she is well out of quarantine. She's due to see the Vet tomorrow to check on how her mastitis is resolving so I'll have her checked for ringworm, too.
I'm struggling to find what is the "right" thing to do for all these cats in need. I know I can do more than just throw money at the problem. I dove in, head first and some times I'm barely treading water and other times I'm just swimming along, fine. This IS difficult, emotional work, but the rewards are beyond my expectations.
Perhaps that should have been one of the key points yesterday? If you know that pulling some animals from "down south" allows that shelter to focus on other things, such as a good spay/neuter program, instead of throwing animals into a gas chamber, then isn't that, in the long run, more helpful than just staying in Connecticut? How rewarding is that to ALL of us, if we help each other out and eventually find some balance? Is that what we're doing here? Maybe so.
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